The Look Back

Yes, 50 Friday Mixes have been turned out thus far. I was thinking about doing something special but I decided against it as I’ll save that for something that is more monumental, like when I do an entire post without any grammar/spelling mistakes.  A lot of new music this week from upcoming releases that I’m very excited about.  I’m also excited to go to the Dwight Yoakam show on Sunday at the Greek Theatre.  I’ve never been to the Greek and I’ve never seen Dwight and the tickets are free thanks to VW and Aquarium Drunkard. 

Okkervil River – Singer Songwriter

From the upcoming “The Stand-Ins” album.  References include rich parents, MGD and groupies. 

Jaguar Love – Bats Over the Pacific Ocean

From the debut album “Take Me To the Sea” comes this track by former members of the Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves.  Not as much screaming as there was on earlier Blood Brother releases which is a good/bad thing depending on your opinion of the Blood Brothers.  However, I suspect if you didn’t like the Blood Brothers this band isn’t going to win you over on first listen.  Johnny Whitney has a love it/hate it voice and the lyrics are still fairly abstract, though audible in this case. 

Murs & 9^th Wonder – Nina Ross

This is from the new mixtape which can be downloaded from his website for free.  A fun track featuring a “player” getting his payback. 

Conor Oberst – Cape Canaveral

It didn’t strike me as being an ear worm but it has turned into one for me.  I find myself humming and singing this song over and over in my head.  Odd, I know. 

Dwight Yoakam – Turn it on, Turn it up, Turn Me Loose

I had to include a Dwight track based on my upcoming concert.  This one just happens to also reference Buck Owens.  One of my favorites. 

Like any other male age 5-40 you should have a plan by now as to when you will see The Dark Knight this weekend.  When you think about the idea of Batman he really should be as cool as he is.  He has no super power, he doesn’t use guns, he models himself after a bat which is a pretty unassuming and boring winged mammal and he wears tights.  (Ok, the tights comment could fit for 93.5% of super heroes but it still holds true.) That being said, Batman is still bad ass and I’m sure this movie will prove that point yet again.  Other than that the weekend also holds a graveyard screening of “A Clockwork Orange” and possibly the GLOW event in Santa Monica.  The Growlers are also playing at La Cave tonight for any fellow Orange County residents, I’ll be there.   

Pnau – Embrace ft. Ladyhawke (Fred Falke & Miami Horror)

Another “get your Friday evening started right” track. This is going up there with Hercules and Love Affair in terms of dance inspiring tracks that I still listen to at work over and over list of 2008. 

Daniel Rossen – Too Little Too Late (Jo Jo Cover)

Found this in my collection from earlier this year.  I believe this was one of the songs Daniel Rossen recorded around Christmas time last year as a gift to the fans.  They threw it on their blog and it was a success.  FYI, Daniel Rossen is a member of Grizzly Bear.  Dare I say the lead singer?  Is that even accurate with Grizzly Bear?  Correct me if I’m wrong and since I know you won’t that make me 100% correct.  Thanks, internet!

BOAT – Topps

This got some love on Pitchfork earlier this week and is going kinda crazy on the blogs as a result.  The digital single comes with 5 hand made baseball cards and a stick of that retched hard, pink chewing gum that came in baseball cards prior to the 90’s baseball card hype machine took it out and replaced it with swatches of Barry Bonds game used HGH clean up towel.  I stopped collecting baseball cards sometime last in high school. (1996-97?)  It was at that point packs of cards were going from 12 cards in a pack for $2-3 to being 3 cards in a pack for $10.  You also quickly learned there was not a real market for said cards even though you would religiously wait for the new issue of Beckett magazine to come out so you could see how well your card had appreciated from the last month.  One last bit of nostalgia, I remember one of the coolest things I could think of doing when I was in middle school was buying a full box of cards and opening them all.  Then I learned girls were kinda cool. 

Glen Campbell – Wichita Lineman

Referred to as, “the first existential country song” by Rolling Stone when it gave this song the distinction of being the 192^nd best Song of All Time in 2004.  We all know how accurate and all encompassing those Rolling Stone’s “Best of” lists are.  Insert a Beetles song here, one Nirvana song there, throw in some Rolling Stone just because and then lets throw them all off with a POS mid-90’s R&B song to keep everyone honest.  This song is likely one you’ve heard on those old after school TV commercials where they advertise best of compilations of 70’s country music.  This was a staple but for good reason.  One last random bit of information, Glen Campbell is headlining a gig at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on my birthday, August 19^th.  I’m really considering it though it is a Tuesday night. 

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

I think I like that quote better than anything else Tolkien has written.  Just had to round out this week with that quote and hope for a better weekend than last.  Very long story (which I do like telling and will get around to writing out at some point) cut short, my landlord/housemate took the first guy who paid cash for the extra room we have upstairs at the beginning of June.  The 60 year old man who moved in, with no credit or background check done by my roommate, decided to go on a 2 week bender culminating in him vomiting blood and leaving the upstairs room in disarray on 4^th of July when he checked himself into a local hospital.  We later found the room, 8+ empty bottles of cheap vodka and soiled bed sheets in the room.  After finally calling the police to have him removed from the backyard, where he proceeded to defecate all over the pavement, he admitted to also having done cocaine upstairs and was likely going to die.  Fun weekend!  Remember kids, it’s not all fun and missed connections on Craigslist.  Beware the 60 year old men wanting to live with you.

Sufjan Stevens – Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Recover!)

This one is dedicated to my ex-roomate from a suburb of Detroit.  He’s the one that decided to move home on a spur of the moment decision that ultimately led to my landlord/housemate deciding to rent the room out to Mr. Drinky McCokehead.  After having been to Detroit twice in the last year I can attest to the state of decay the city is in.  I didn’t really think it was possible for a city to look that bad in modern day America.  Burned out houses on every block, shacks that people still live in, rampant unemployment and no relief in site.  You can save them Sufjan, I know you can!  BTW, when you tell people “I’m from Detroit” and you really live over an hour and a half from even the outskirts of the city in a wealthy suburb, you’re not really from Detroit.  If that were the case then I currently live in both downtown Los Angeles and San Diego at the same time and by that geography, just outside of Las Vegas.  One last thing, in Southern California we really don’t care where you are from.  You are here now and we all know this is the best place in the country or you wouldn’t be here in the first place.  Geophobic statements, done. 

Port O’Brien – I Woke Up Today

I missed these guys playing down the street at Detroit bar on Tuesday.  As I’ve stated previously, I’m getting up there in years and can’t quite make it out to all the Tuesday night shows I would like to.  27 going on 87.  I’m sure I missed a great show and this is a great single from their recently released album, All We Could Do Was Sing.  Very catchy as is the album as a whole.  On first listen there were a couple songs that really didn’t strike me as being anything that creative in terms of lyrics but I’ve found myself singing about the horrid weather in Alaska and about my father being a fisherman quite a few more times than I would care to admit.  These guys really remind me of Oh No! Oh My! in that upbeat poppy simple lyric feel.  Hopefully they come through Costa Mesa again soon.

Zookeeper – I Live in the Mess You Are

Part of the ever growing club of “bands I don’t know where I downloaded their songs from”.  My genius file organization (placing music in folders by month and year I download them) tells me it was originally downloaded in August of 2007 so it had to correlate to something around their LP release of Becoming All Things.  Former members of original emo band Mineral, this sounds nothing like the current crop of emo artists.  I don’t know much more than that about this band hailing from Austin but if I do, you guys will be the first to know.  Until then, enjoy this infectious single.

The Airborne Toxic Event – Missy

This is my favorite band of the moment.  I’ve listened to their full length self titled album on repeat all day and it shows no signs of letting go of its grasp of me.  I’ve been seeing hand bills and show announcements all year for this band and I’ve had no idea what/who they were.  They have sold out the Troubadour earlier this year and at that point I thought it was a showcase event of a bunch of random indie bands. WRONG.  Then I started to hear more rumblings of how good this BAND was and went on to think it was a super group made up of washed up old 80’s hair band members looking to reemerge in the new indie LA scene. WRONG.  Basically, I just haven’t been paying that much attention to the hype and now it has gotten to me.  Local band sure to make good in the next year after the full length comes out in August.  Hell, they even have a slot lined up on August 1^st for Conan O’Brien.  It was hard to pick just one track off of this album, second favorite being “Does This Mean You’re Moving On” but I had to go with their ode to Los Angeles and the perils of one young individual landing in the city for the first time. 

Everest – Trees

Breaking away from the usual 4^th/5^th song of the mix being a traditional or 80’s radio country hit comes this Everest track.  These guys are not even considered alt-country but I still get that country feel from their songs.  Maybe it is the production value, maybe the assorted lyrical tones on the record or maybe it’s just that I really like this song and wanted a way to warrant placing it on this weeks mix.  That’s probably the one but take a listen and tell me what you think.  Even those of you who normally just skip right over the last track on this mix, this is different. 

The 4^th of July is upon us and with it brings me out of the office and into the sun.  You really have to appreciate the wonders of the internet when I can post this a day early and have it not get posted until the next day.  Yeah, I know there are much cooler things online than this but I’m just going to try and be content with little things such as post dating blog posts.  I’ll save the cancer research and online Sudoku for you fancy types.  Happy Birthday as well to this Friday Mix series.  She turned one a couple weeks ago and like a normal 20 something year old parent I forgot to make note of this.  Happy Birthday darlin, we love you very, very much.  

The Hold Steady – Constructive Summer

One of the best summer songs of 2008 that hasn’t officially been released yet.  I still say that the My Morning Jacket song will catch on one of these days and take that title.  I guess I would actually have to listen to the radio to find out if this is true or not.  For the record, I actually do listen to the radio quite a bit.  It just so happens that it is always on a, dare I say it, sports talk station.  Yes, I understand how ultimately trivial sports talk radio is and how it is filled with some of the lowest common denominators of society.  I like to forget all that stuff and instead focus on what potential trades are out there to solidify the middle of the Angel’s batting order or if this crazy Ron Artest for Lamar Odom trade is ever going to actually come about.  You know, stuff that REALLY matters.

Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules Theme

I have yet to get sick of this song or album.  I currently play this song at least once a day and have been since sometime in April.  This is my defacto “going out on Friday night” warm up song.  Nothing better than listening to this while drinking an energy drink, trust me. NOTHING. 

Nina Simone – Feeling Good

I’m not a girl so I have never gotten heavily into Nina Simone but this song really reminds me of summer.  Take it how you like. 

Yeasayer – Wait for the Summer

I really didn’t include this song just because the title has the word “summer” in it, promise.  The beat and harmony are very upbeat and really get me thinking about a nice beach day in Newport.  Then you settle in and listen to the lyrics. Not so much.  I usually don’t associate killing my girlfriend/wife with the happy and upbeat summer months.  Obviously these guys do and more power to them if they are going to continue to put out quality tracks such as this.  Oh yeah, Conan Obrien also loves them.  That’s got to be worth a couple packets of Taco Bell hot sauce. (Since it isn’t free anymore it is actually worth money are thus that was a proper analogy)

Hank Williams – Last Night I Heard You Crying in Your Sleep

His grandson really needs to get his CD out of the courts and into the streets.  I have been waiting for new Hank III since last summer and it is infuriating to know it is done, finished, pressed, and ready to go but has all this legal garbage behind it.  I’m also sad there isn’t a bigger underground country scene on the internet that could get this leaked like they can for seemingly every other release out there these days.  Yes, this has nothing to do with Hank Williams but it seems to be more fun to write about.